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Corporate Social Responsibility
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5.10.2007 - 08:00am ET
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IBM Unveils Plan to Combat Data Center Energy Crisis; Allocates $1 Billion to Advance "Green" Technology and Services
IBM to Double Computing Capacity in its Own Data Centers, Uses New Technologies to Avoid Five Billion Kilowatt Hours of New Energy Use
(CSRwire) NEW YORK, NY - May 10, 2007 - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it is
redirecting $1 billion per year across its businesses, mobilizing the
company’s resources to dramatically increase the level of energy
efficiency in IT. The plan includes new products and services for IBM and
its clients to sharply reduce data center energy consumption, transforming
the world’s business and public technology infrastructures into "green"
data centers.
The savings are substantial -- for an average 25,000 square foot data
center, clients should be able to achieve 42 percent energy savings. Based
on the energy mix in the US, this savings equates to 7,439 tons of carbon
emissions saved per year.
Called “Project Big Green,” IBM’s initiative targets corporate data
centers where energy constraints and costs can limit their ability to
grow. The initiative includes a new global “green team” of more than
850 energy efficiency architects from across IBM.
Today, according to analyst firm IDC, roughly 50 cents is spent on energy
for every dollar of computer hardware. This is expected to increase by 54
percent to 71 cents over the next four years. [1]
“The data center energy crisis is inhibiting our clients’ business
growth as they seek to access computing power,” said Mike Daniels,
senior vice president, IBM Global Technology Services. “Many data
centers have now reached full capacity, limiting a firm’s ability to
grow and make necessary capital investments. Today we are providing
clients the IBM action plan to make their data centers fully utilized and
energy efficient.”
IBM currently runs the world’s largest commercial technology
infrastructure, with more than eight million square feet of data centers
in six continents. By using the same energy efficiency initiatives it is
offering clients today, IBM expects to double the computing capacity of
its data centers within the next three years without increasing power
consumption or its carbon footprint [2]. Compared to doubling the size of
its data centers by building out new space, IBM expects this will help save
more than five billion kilowatt hours of energy per year.
IBM Details “Project Big Green”
IBM is using its expertise and energy-smart technology innovations to
outline a five-step approach for clients that is designed to dramatically
improve energy efficiency:
DIAGNOSE: Evaluate existing facilities -- energy assessment,
virtual 3-D power management and thermal analytics
BUILD: Plan, build or update to an energy efficient data center
VIRTUALIZE: Virtualize IT infrastructures and special purpose
processors
MANAGE: Seize control with power management software
COOL: Exploit liquid cooling solutions -- inside and out of the
data center
“Just as IBM helped organizations grapple with new innovations around
the Internet and Linux, we will again assist clients navigate this new era
of energy efficient computing,” said Bill Zeitler, senior vice president,
IBM Systems and Technology Group. “Relief from the energy crisis can’t
be achieved through incremental improvements. Bold ideas and actionable
plans are needed to deal with this issue.”
1. DIAGNOSE: Evaluate existing facilities -- energy assessment,
virtual 3-D power management and thermal analytics
Clients struggle to obtain accurate and detailed information on the energy
efficiency of their data centers and what major opportunities exist for
improvement. Data centers exhibit significant hotspots – regions of high
power density – which result from a flawed layout of server racks,
unsound floor designs, and the undesired intermixing of hot and cold air.
IBM can conduct an energy efficiency assessment for clients’ data
centers that can reduce energy costs by up to 40 percent. This service –
the IBM Data Center Energy Efficiency Assessment – utilizes a new
standard metric to rate the energy efficiency of the data center, and
presents a plan for clients to increase their efficiency.
Mobile Measurement Technology (MMT), a new technology from IBM
Research, measures 3-D temperature distributions within data centers. The
new mobile measurement machine includes a position monitoring system with
a network of up to 100 sensors used to gather thermal data at a granular
level, with unprecedented speed and accuracy as it travels through the
data center. MMT was implemented at Pacific Gas & Electric’s three data
centers in California where it accurately visualized hot spots, air leakage
and other inefficiencies across their 40,000 square feet of data center
space in a few days, as opposed to a few weeks if surveyed by hand.
IBM Thermal Analysis for High Density Computing service product
identifies and resolves existing and potential heat-related issues that
are likely to create outages in existing data centers, and provides
options for power savings and future expansion.
IBM will use virtual worlds to explore virtual 3-D power management
of data centers, resulting in more efficient energy use.
2. BUILD: Plan, build or update an energy efficient data center
Based on IBM’s experience of building 30 million square feet of data
center space for clients worldwide, the Data Center Energy Efficiency
Assessment service complements additional new energy efficient service
products announced today, including:
The Energy Efficiency Self Assessment provides clients a free online
view of their data center energy efficiency;
The IBM Scalable Modular Data Center, a pre-configured 500 or 1,000
square foot data center solution with energy efficient technologies that
can be implemented in 8-12 weeks and is 15 percent less expensive than
traditional data center builds;
The IBM Optimized Airflow Assessment for Cabling, which helps
clientsimprove air flow under the data center raised floor and reduce
cabling costs, and;
Specialized Facilities capabilities to design and build green
buildings which help clientsintegrate all building subsystems to operate
in a safe, efficient and ecologically friendly environment leading to
significant energy savings.
Additional IBM partner-enabled service offerings are available from
leading global power and cooling technology, providers including Anixter,
Inc., APC-MGE, Eaton, Emerson Network Power / Liebert, GE Consumer &
Industrial, and Schneider Electric.
3. VIRTUALIZE: Virtualize IT infrastructure and exploit special
purpose processors
Clients need to move to virtualized infrastructure and take advantage of
emerging hybrid systems that utilize special purpose processors to improve
performance and reduce energy consumption.
IBM leads in providing the industry’s most comprehensive
virtualization technologies – including mainframe, UNIX, x86, and
storage systems -- which allow clients to consolidate work onto fewer
computers, increasing utilization, which can significantly reduce energy
and maintenance bills and simplify their infrastructure. Today, many
computer systems use 5 percent to 12 percent of their capacity. IBM’s
mainframe, which includes the world’s most sophisticated virtualization
technologies, already allows clients to reach nearly 100 percent server
utilization.
IBM’s BladeCenter, a thin, plug-in blade server for consolidating
IT infrastructures, can not only provide physical integration of an
infrastructure, but the design of its switching technology can help result
in reduced power consumption. According to IBM internal studies, an
average BladeCenter with embedded Ethernet and Fibre Channel switches can
help save clients up to 50 percent power, per port over a typical rack
optimized server.
WebSphere DataPower SOA Appliances have been shown to perform XML and
Web services security processing as much as 72 times better than
server-based systems alone. This translates into clients who are deploying
XML applications and seeking to secure their Web services so they can
increase their performance and reduce application latency while at the
same time reducing their need for additional hardware resources to
accomplish the same job with reduced system footprint and power
consumption.
For analytics and digital media, the Cell Broadband Engine can
deliver extreme performance compared with conventional processors. IBM
client Mayo Clinic is using Cell as part of its BladeCenter and can now
speed the processing of 3-D medical images for use by radiologists by up
to 50 times faster than on a traditional processor configuration.
4. MANAGE: Seize control with power management software
Provisioning software can reduce 80 percent of power consumption on
servers automatically by putting them on standby mode when they are not
needed. If this software was deployed in all the estimated U.S. data
centers, the country could save 5.4 billion kilowatt hours per year,
enough electricity to heat 370,000 homes for a winter.
Tivoli management software will expand the IBM Cool Blue portfolio of
energy efficient technology with software that monitors power consumption,
allows users to set power policies and tracks energy usage and accurately
charges back departments’ power consumption in a data center. As a
result, every department can be held accountable and learn to create
efficiencies by both monitoring for current energy use to find
opportunities for savings, and by allowing users to save energy through
minimizing consumption via server provisioning and de-provisioning. In the
State of California, IBM will send clients free information on provisioning
technology that can reduce energy consumption to help businesses deal with
the state’s acute energy crisis.
PowerExecutive software, part of the IBM Systems Director portfolio,
will now be available across all IBM systems and storage. Originally
designed from IBM BladeCenter and System x, in November 2007 IBM will roll
the free energy management technology out across IBM System i, System p,
System z and System Storage. It is the only energy management software
tool that can provide clients with a view of the actual power used, as
opposed to benchmarked power consumption, and can effectively allocate,
match and cap power and thermal limits in the data center at the system,
chassis or rack level. By enabling power capping, clients can effectively
run their systems on cruise control.
5. COOL: Exploit liquid cooling solutions -- inside and out of the
data center
Analyst firm IDC estimates that in 2006 $29 billion was spent on powering
and cooling IT systems [3].
IBM is announcing a patented “stored cooling” solution that
dramatically increases the efficiency of the largest single use of power
in the data center – the end-to-end cooling system. The IBM Data Center
Stored Cooling Solution service product, implemented at an IBM data center
in Quebec, achieved 45 percent savings and has already been named the
“best new energy product” by the American Society of Heating,
Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).
IBM’s patented Rear Door Heat eXchanger “cooling doors” are now
available across most IBM Systems offerings. While requiring no additional
fans or electricity, they reduce server heat output in data centers up to
60 percent by utilizing chilled water to dissipate heat generated by
computer systems. IBM also plans to introduce a new set of liquid cooling
technologies later this year developed by IBM Research Labs.
IBM will soon launch an open, Web-enabled clearinghouse for energy
efficiency incentives. The Energy Efficiency Incentive Finder will be one
central website for details about energy efficiency incentives and
programs that are available from local utility companies, governments, and
other participating agencies anywhere in the world.
IBM Global Financing (IGF), the financing business segment of IBM, is
uniquely positioned as part of Project Big Green to provide a “green
wrapper” of financing solutions to help data center owners access or
acquire the hardware, software and services they need to build an
energy-efficient data center. IGF’s simple financing solutions to
qualified customers will help alleviate some of the capital constraints
and allow enterprises, the opportunity to align their upfront costs to
anticipated project benefits. Easy lease and loan terms will also help
facilitate the planning and tracking of project costs.
IBM is a long-standing leader in environmental protection, having taken
early action to establish its environmental affairs policy in 1971. For
more information about IBM’s Energy Efficiency Initiative, news
announced today, access to video and audio interviews with IBM and
industry leaders, please visit: www.ibm.com/press/greendatacenter.
Broadcast-quality video for journalists is available at: www.thenewsmarket.com/ibm.
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